Seniors, it’s never too late to do something about your health

Dear Annie: I would like to comment on Gail Rae-Garwood’s letter about kidney disease.

I retired in 2010, and like a lot of retirees, I was complacent about my health. I had been taking insulin for my diabetes for 20 years and had high cholesterol and elevated blood pressure. I finally went in for my annual checkup and was shocked to learn that I had anemia and stage-three kidney failure.

I had no symptoms for the kidney failure, with the exception of being tired. I had always attributed that to my diabetes and my age (68). My doctor told me to diet and exercise, but it was up to me to take ownership of my health and be proactive. Nobody is going to do it for you.

To make a long story short, exercising and eating properly allowed me to lose 90 pounds. I reversed my cholesterol in three months and am off of medication. My diabetes went away in six months. In eight months, I reversed my kidney failure and am now completely normal. My BMI is in the healthy range. My wife has lost close to 100 pounds and reversed her thyroid sickness after being on medication for six years.

So please tell your readers to see their doctors regularly for blood and urine tests and to ask for a copy of the results. Take ownership of your health. Our successes have astonished our doctors. I thank God for waking us up. Now we hopefully will be around to see our grandchildren grow up. I will celebrate my 70th birthday this year and look forward to the new day. To our senior population, it is never too late to do something about your health. — Newbury Park, Calif.

Dear Newbury Park: You and your wife are an inspiration and proof that so much of our overall health is tied to our diet and exercise programs. Many things can be improved if we make the effort. Thank you for sharing your story. You rock.

Dear Annie: Please reconsider what constitutes pornography. In my opinion, simply looking at nude bodies in magazines or on the Internet is not pornography. If it were, then some of the greatest works of art should be banned.

What I believe constitutes true pornography is viewing sexual acts or specific parts of the body in a sexual way. Also, you might consider the fact that many older men use milder forms of so-called porn (girlie magazines, for example) to “charge” their batteries, which can benefit their partners. If this helps them only at home, what is the crime? — Nude Bodies Are OK

Dear Nude: There is a difference between nudity as art and nudity for prurient purposes. And girlie magazines are fairly benign compared to what’s on the Internet these days. Our problem is with the photos that demean or exploit women or airbrush them into such a state of perfection that men can no longer appreciate real women. And those are just the photographs.

But our concern is not about using pornography (of any type) to augment what goes on in the bedroom between consenting adults. It’s when viewing pornography becomes addictive and interferes with intimacy in the marriage or leads to virtual affairs.

Dear Annie: Is there any chance that “Sick of Xenophobes” was working at my drive-thru window? I once gave my order through the speaker, and when the person repeated it back to me, I didn’t understand a word of what was said. I repeated the order slowly and assumed it was what was repeated back to me, even though I couldn’t make it out. But when I got home, there was nothing in the bag that I had ordered.

Perhaps the person with the thick accent had as much trouble understanding me as I did them. — Sorry Someone Was Rude to You